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Monday, 17 December 2012

Back with an iPad app review of a free one called DebtPayoffL that allows someone to set up different debts (e.g. car, university), each with it's own amount owing and interest rate. It then shows all the debts in a table with a row for each debt and a progress graph and payoff date shown. Touching each row gives you the detail payment schedule. There are also some Loan calculators you can use to do "what-if" amortization calculations. Lots of good features with this one. The free version allows you to track two debts and if you upgrade to the full version you can track as many as you need.

This app would be a good tool to help teach students about debt, loans and amortization calculations. It looks like you could use it outside the classroom as well to track real debts. I'll do a demo video of this one soon and look at more of the features.

I took this of my son before he started high school to test some questions we incorporated into surveys given to students prior to running a course. I thought it would be interesting to see what his answers would be.

As part of these surveys, we ask students if they plan to take post secondary education and how they plan to pay for it. Some of the results are quite interesting. One set of the survey results had 10% of the class answering "don't know" to the "how you plan to pay" question. These were grade 11 students with only one more year of high school. A bit worrisome.

Parents, have you talked to your kids about paying for school?

I'd love to do a survey of kids and their parents using these same questions. If any of you would be interested in getting us to do such a survey, please contact us.

Thursday, 6 December 2012

When I was a kid and groceries weren't computerized with bar codes, the cashiers frequently made mistakes ringing up our purchases. I remember my parents checking off every item against the sales receipt. Things are a bit better now but still it's a good skill to teach kids to be aware of purchase prices.

Did they charge me the right price? What will be the price with tax? Did I get the right change? Did they do the foreign exchange correctly?

Here's an interesting and related item. There are many retailers in Canada that have adopted "The Scanner Price Accuracy Voluntary Code". One part of the code says "....where the scanned price of the product at checkout is higher than the price displayed in the store, the lower price will be honoured and ...if the correct price is $10 or less, the retailer will give the product to the customer free of charge or...higher than $10, the retailer will give a discount of $10 off the corrected price...". See www.retailcouncil.org for more details.

Monday, 3 December 2012

Something I recommend whether you're a parent, teacher or other adult interacting with children is to share your financial adventures or experiences. Whether your experience is good or bad (nobody will make good decisions always), it can be extremely valuable in learning about the financial world. Sometimes you think children aren't listening but you'd be surprised. Very often, especially parents feel finances, are a secret adult thing and are reluctant to share. Don't be.

Just the other day I was going to increase our family's Internet data plan... Internet being something near and dear to my kids. I shared my adventure in negotiating a new plan. Hopefully they learned a little about bargaining. Some other ideas - talk to them about how your mortgage works, how you use a credit card, look at utility bills together (e.g. Why does it vary so much month to month). Lots of possibilities to talk about.

Friday, 23 November 2012

We have seen a lot of material that tells you or infers saving is good and spending is bad. This is the wrong message to give. The message we prefer is everyone has dreams and goals and spending and saving are actions you can take to achieve them. Without the proper knowledge on finances, people end up delaying or sabotaging their goals and dreams.

There's a pretty good free iPad app called goalGetter that illustrates setting goals and saving for them. It lets you put different goals such as school, a car or a house on a graph, set the value of each and set your monthly saving amount. It then shows if you'll make your goal or not. Not a serious planning tool but good for teaching. I'll put add a demo video next week to show you this app.

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Our mission is to provide kids with the knowledge, skills and confidence to make responsible financial decisions. Our primary delivery of this is through in-classroom training. Please go to www.moneymatters4life.ca for more information.SinceNovember is financial literacy month in Canada, we wanted to take this opportunity to provide more information and resources to help teachers, students and parents. We are currently undergoing a re-design of our website and have added this blog to provide fresh insights in the area of financial literacy.Over the coming weeks, we’ll be adding weeklycontent including useful links to resources, reviews of tablet educationalapps, interesting survey results and more.James WhelanEVP, MoneyMatters